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Samsung and HTC have gotten very good at making smartphones, but few would argue that Apple’s iPhone creations always raise the bar. The iPhone 5 may not be the stunner that we were hoping for, but it is a wondrous phone. Focusing on the Apple world for a minute, we were wondering how the iPhone 5 stacked up against the iPhone 4S.

The iPhone 5 case has a sleek two-tone glass and aluminum look. While it’s more drop-resistant, the aluminum scratches and shows fingerprints more easily than the 4S shell.

Dimensionally, the iPhone 5 is markedly different than its predecessor. It’s lighter - 112g compared to 140g. It’s also 1.7mm thinner than the 4S, measuring 7.6mm.

The screen is a full 4” and has a 1,136×640 resolution – an expansion that was necessary due to the popularity of watching movies and playing games on mobile phones.

The iPhone 5's change in aspect ratio is 16:9 compared to the previous 3:2, and has become a problem for both running the current apps and the urgency for designing new. Some apps will show a black bar at the top and bottom until they’re updated.

The speakers seem to have lots less distortion, or at least they seem louder than they were on the 4S. There is still nothing better than sound from a good pair of headphones.

Neither the 5 nor the 4S has a removable battery or SD card. The batteries are very similar – the 4S has a 1,432mAh and the iPhone 5 has a 1,440mAh. This means around 40 hours of music and eight hours of talk time – similar times for both models.

They both come in 16, 32 and 64GB versions.

The iPhone 5 has 4G LTE support, a huge upgrade over the 4S 3G limitation.

The A6 chip is twice as fast as the 4S’ A5. The A5 chip is 1GHz and the A6 is 1.3GHz, which in real life use is a noticeable boost. The iPhone 5 also has 1GB of RAM compared to the 512MB in the 4S.

The new 9-pin Lightning connector significantly shrinks the footprint of the ancient 30-pin connector, but the change has irritated many because the new dock connector is necessary to using old Apple equipment. Get over it.

The 4G LTE capability is terrific, but unless you’re a Verizon subscriber, you’re still stuck on some version of 3G/4G.

Both the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 4S are amazing phones. Hopefully, this comparison has provided lots of reasons to upgrade - or not.

This week, Verizon customers fell victim to an iPhone 5 bug that sucked data like a vampire

Just in time for Halloween, Verizon has unleashed a horrible and terrifying monster: it's the fabled iPhone 5 data vampire, and for Verizon subscribers lucky (or unlucky?) enough to have Apple's latest smartphone, it's causing huge overages.

"I have had an iPhone on AT&T since launch. I never went over a gig in any month," wrote one such user in the Mac Rumors forum. "I have used half a gig [on the iPhone 5] in 2 days with Verizon! Worse, it uses LTE while I am at home with a rock solid Wi-Fi connection. If I turn cellular off altogether I can still see, for example, a YouTube video. But if I leave it on, while still connected with wifi, it sucks data like a vampire. WTF??? And, all day, it leaks data even with no apps running!"

The bug has been a common one for Verizon subscribers using the iPhone 5, causing most of them to go through insane amounts of data in a really short period of time.

Fortunately, there is a way to slay this monter, but it's not with a wooden stake. Instead, Apple has offered a patch available directly on the iPhone 5 that should fix the issue quickly and without too much hassle.

To install it, go to Settings > General > About, and wait for the following message and follow the instructions.

Apple swiftly offered an update for Verizon subscribers on the iPhone 5

"Basically, turn your phone off and on again," says Gizmodo. "After doing that, you should check to make sure the carrier software has been changed to Verizon 13.1."

Aside from the fact that your iPhone should stop sucking data like Dracula at the blood bank, there's also another piece of good news. Verizon issued a statement clarifying that they're aware of the bug and won't be charging subscribers for the overages it has caused:

"Under certain circumstances, iPhone 5 may use Verizon cellular data while the phone is connected to a Wi-Fi network. Apple has a fix that is being delivered to Verizon customers right on their iPhone 5. Verizon Wireless customers will not be charged for any unwarranted cellular data usage."

If you're a smartphone owner, you're already familiar with the ritual if charging up your device one or more times a day. And the question of how much power you're actually sucking when you do so has probably crossed your mind. It's got to be quite a bit, right?

The report found that the power used to charge a smartphone throughout an entire year is negligible. According to Opower, it takes just 3.5 kilowatt hours per year (an annual energy cost of about $0.41) to charge up an iPhone 5 from 0% to full, year-round. That's pretty cheap.

The rates were pretty close for the Samsung Galaxy S III, which costs roughly $0.53 a year to charge. Opower says the slight discrepancy is probably due to the fact that the Galaxy's battery is larger.

But, though the impact of charging an individual smartphone is pretty small, Opower reminds us that, collectively, they do eat up a lot of power:

"This year alone, Apple expects to sell 170 million iPhone 5s. Those 170 million smartphones will draw enough electricity to power all of the homes in Cedar Rapids, Iowa for a year."

Still, Opower predicts that smartphones may help reduce energy consumption over all, since they're now being used in many cases as substitutes for bulkier, more power-hungry devices, like desktop computers and TVs.

For instance, says Opower, "An iPhone 5 requires 20 times less energy to operate than a typical laptop – and 100 times less energy than a typical 42-inch plasma TV."

“Put simply, says Opower analyst Barry Fischer, "a day spent web-surfing and Facebooking on a smartphone or tablet is a much more energy-efficient day than doing the same on a computer [...] the rise of smartphones, like the iPhone 5, is likely to save energy in American homes as it diverts our time from using far less efficient consumer electronic devices.”

This graphic from Mashable compares the energy used for other consumer electronics relative to the iPhone 5

Next month, all you'll need is your smartphone equipped with the Square Wallet app to buy your latte at Starbucks. In November, Starbucks’ customers will be able to use the Square mobile payment system in about 7,000 U.S. stores.

Starbucks and Square formed a big partnership last August. Starbucks invested $25 million in Square. The deal allows Square to process credit and debit card transactions and implement the Pay with Square system at Starbucks stores.

To use Pay with Square you link a credit card to the app. When you’re paying at the counter, leave your wallet in your pocket. Through the app the store can sense your phone's location and charges your account for the amount of your purchase. The cashier verifies your identity through a picture ID and name that pops up on their screen.

Apple users aren't being left out. The latest update to the Starbucks iOS app lets Starbucks card owners add their accounts to Apple’s Passbook directly through the app. Then you can pay for food and beverages, check your card balances, reload the card with more cash, and add rewards to score free drinks, all through your iPhone.

Links to user-generated content on Facebook, Twitter and review sites make up a quarter of the search results for the top 20 brands in the world. Sixty percent of Facebook users say they would discuss a product or service if they were offered a deal of some kind.

Social media shoppers are some of the most active shoppers out there – spending an average of $1,800 per person. And 167 million of them are expected to shop online in 2012. In 2014, it’s estimated that the internet will trigger 53% of all retail sales – both online and off.

Here is how shoppers are using their smartphones according to the online analytics company that compiled all this data - Symphony Teleca:

33% looked for sales and specials
33% checked store information
32% looked at product reviews and ratings
31% compared prices on Amazon
31% checked out an online store for a certain product
29% looked around at online retailers other than Amazon
27% used a site that focuses on providing competitive prices
26% made sure the store had a product in their inventory
24% scouted the prices for certain products on a retailer’s mobile site

Just to demonstrate the power that we consumers wield – 85% of people anticipate a change in their shopping behavior based on the user-generated information they find online. Remember that the next time you have a great (or a miserable) shopping experience. Help each other out, and take the time to share.

The bright and colorful Nokia Lumia 920 line is coming in November, but only to AT&T

It's big, it's bright, it's beautiful, and it's coming in November – but only to AT&T?

Nokia recently unveiled the Lumia 920 at a press event in New York last month. But as TechCrunch and many others reported today, the company just announced that its flagship Windows Phone 8 device would be coming exclusively to AT&T in November, along with the Lumia 820.

TechCrunch seems to have anticipated this news, brushing it aside to focus instead on how great they think Nokia's new smartphone is:

"The Lumia 920 has just about everything you could ask for in a smartphone, with a 4.5-inch 720p display, a 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor, a relatively large 2,000mAh battery, and of course, the heady combination of Windows Phone 8 and Pureview imaging."

But others, like Gizmodo, are taking issue with the Nokia's recent deal with AT&T, calling the exclusive "dumb" and citing 5 reasons why.

According to Gizmodo, the deal is going to hurt Windows Phone 8, and that "the premier Windows Phone device of the year [...] should be made available to as many U.S. shoppers as possible."

Meanwhile, says Gizmodo, carrier exclusives in general almost never work, and that, in particular, the exclusive Nokia gave to AT&T for the Lumia 900 didn't work either. The argument here is that users don't change carriers just for a new smartphone.

Another reason why Gizmodo is facepalming over the whole deal? They say that the Lumia 920's Qi wireless charging capabilities should be a major selling point, but that it's being downplayed by the fact that their device with Qi won't be widely available.

What do you think? Is an AT&T exclusive on the Lumia 920 a good idea? Leave your opinion in the comments section.

Top of the list was security. According to most of the top tech sites, Galaxy S III owners might have had a bit of a scare this week. That is, if Samsung hadn't already dealt with the problem before anyone even knew it existed.

Apparently, says Mashable, a vulnerability was discovered in Samsung's Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) that "potentially allowed attackers to remotely wipe the contents of Galaxy S II and III devices," essentially restoring them to factory settings.

This video, of Technical University Berlin researcher Ravi Borgaonkar at a security conference in Argentina, shows how it's done.

“We would like to assure our customers that the recent security issue concerning the GALAXY S III has already been resolved through a software update. We recommend all GALAXY S III customers to download the latest software update, which can be done quickly and easily via the Over-The-Air (OTA) service.”

So, now that your smartphone is safe and sound, how about encrusting it with crystals? If you're nodding your head in agreement, and if you have upwards of £2099 (about $3370 U.S.) to spare, maybe consider upgrading to the Samsung Galaxy S III Swarovski Edition?

This crystal-encrusted "Swarovski Edition" Galaxy S III may cost you upward of $3370, but at least the case is free

The device, available from Amosu Couture, is set with 500 Swarovski crystals around the bezel, plus an extra 16 around the home button. Sort of pricey and all, but you do get a free calf leather case.

Now for the really juicy stuff. Hot on the heels of all the rumors surrounding an iPad Mini launch, Samsung's brewing its own big news about something small.

This leaked German invite to a rumored Samsung Galaxy S III Mini launch reads: "So big can be small. And so small can be big."

According to TechCrunch, which cited "a recently released press invitation," Samsung may be unveiling a smaller scale version of the Galaxy S III (the Mini) at a store in Frankfurt, Germany. The invite, written in German and loosely translated as "So big can be small. And so small can be big," is so far the only proof of such an event.

But it's already got Samsung fans more than a little excited, if you'll excuse the pun.

Now even the process of charging your phone can be entertaining. A new app from the Toyota car company called “Plug-in Championship” makes a game of plugging in your phone. This is the first app of its kind.

The goal of the game is to plug in your phone’s charger when the power meter on the screen is at its highest. The better your timing, the better your score. You score every time you plug in the connector to your phone. Once the phone is plugged and you’ve gotten your score, the app gives you a fast-paced video to add to the fun.

The Plug-in Championship game isn’t complex or challenging. It's just another way to pass some time and compare scores with your buddies.

Toyota developed “Plug-in Championship” as part of its promotional campaign for the Prius PHV hybrid car. The app is available for iOS and Android.

A report in Fortune magazine says it’s likely that Apple will show the world its iPad Mini in a launch event on October 17th. An Apple investor claims to have heard about Apple’s plans from multiple sources and predicts that invitations to the event will go out on October 10th, we’ll have a first look at the iPad Mini on October 17th , and we could see it on the market as soon as November 2nd.

Leaked photos of the little tablet have been circulating for quite a while showing a 7.85-inch device with a rear-facing camera. The casing looks to be aluminum-backed with a front display that is similar to the current iPad’s. It will probably have a black or white bezel surrounding the screen and a home button at the bottom. There is no doubt that tablet will be set up with the new Lightning connector.

Thankfully, the iPad Mini is rumored to be priced in the range of other major tablets like Nook, Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire. Apple offering a tablet for around $200 will probably make everyone except Barnes and Noble, Google and Amazon very happy.

Since neither the development of a smaller version of the iPad nor any dates for the launch of the alleged device have ever been acknowledged by Apple, all this information could be completely wrong. Since we’re hearing it everywhere, we’ll just let Apple be the one to prove us right.

Rumors swell about an iPad Mini launch as a mockup video suggesting its design details emerges

As this week opened, the major news at all the top tech sites was, well, mini.

Amid all the buzz is Apple's much-anticipated, diminutive successor to the iPad.

The iPad Mini, of course, isn't even available yet, but techies and Apple fanatics alike nearly blew a gasket this morning when rumors of an upcoming iPad Mini event began to swirl.

Now, don't get hasty. The rumors aren't even about a supposed date for said event, but rather about a date for the first invitations to get sent out. Citing a major Apple investor as a source, Fortune reported that the press should expect invitations for October 10.

That date led 9to5 mac to speculate that an iPad Mini launch could be expected for mid-October, followed by shipping in November. Since that would be an apt time for Apple to capitalize on the Christmas shopping frenzy, we tend to lean toward that projection holding true.

But if tablet and Apple junkies got excited about mere rumors about event invitations, just imagine how they must have felt when a leaked mock-up of the new tablet showed up on Japanese Apple blog Macotakara.

Among the conjecture is that the iPad Mini will be about as thick as an iPod

The new tablet also appears to have speakers at the bottom rather than at the rear, which is in line with yet more rumors.

But that's not the last bit of tantalizing gossip to emerge this week. Macotakara also reported that production for the iPad Mini has, in fact, begun in Brazil. though, they say, they "don't have information if it has been produced in [a] Chinese factory, yet."

Nor do we at Pure Mobile expect this to be last we hear about the next big – or is it little – thing to happen to the iPad.